The Draw of a Baby

 Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–Vigil Mass
    Special Masses like the Sacred Tridduum, Easter, and Christmas, often have special rituals associated with them for priests.  At Holy Thursday and Good Friday we have special rites that remember the Lord’s institution of the Eucharist and the Priesthood, as well as His Passion.  At the Easter Vigil we hear the great hymn of the Exultet.  And tonight, at Christmas, we placed the baby Jesus in the creche for the first time this Christmas season.  There is something that is truly awesome (filling me with awe) when I take the baby Jesus and kneel down to put Him in the manger.
    There is something special about children.  Even the gruffest, stone-faced person can become a pile of mush in the presence of a baby.  Yes, babies are a lot of work, but their simply, loving presence can fill a room with warmth and joy.  And when a baby cries, everyone wants to make sure that the child is ok.  Mothers, in particular, seem to have special hearing when it comes to listening for the cries of a little one.

    Tonight we celebrate our God-made-man, but not yet fully a man, but a little baby.  Mary and Joseph, who knew their child to be God must have had reactions to Jesus in two different ways.  On the one hand, Jesus was Mary’s child and in the paternal care of Joseph.  He was theirs, and depended on both of them for all of His needs.  In some ways He was like any other child, filling the Holy Family with joy and warmth, and yet also calling for their attention as He cried for whatever needs He had at each moment.  On the other hand, He was also God, and so took on special attention and adoration of Mary and Joseph.  
    To outsiders, too–the shepherds and maybe the neighbors in Bethlehem–Jesus must have drawn their attention.  Perhaps they didn’t quite recognize that Jesus was God, and yet He was a baby, who draws people in by their innocence and dependence.  And this is the genius of God: that in coming to us, God did not choose to become a powerful ruler with great strength; God did not appear as an angel full of light and power; God chose to become, in Jesus, a little baby, who depended others for His safety and basic needs.  He was vulnerable in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, and remained vulnerable especially throughout his childhood.  Did God choose to become a baby because He knew that we would be drawn by a little child, or are we drawn to little children because God wrote within our very being a desire for everyone who appears like the Christ-child?  In either case, God appeared to us not in strength, but in weakness; not in power, but in fragility; not as a grown warrior, but as a defenseless baby.
    Many saints have imagined themselves being at Bethlehem when Jesus was born.  Perhaps you have, too.  You have wondered what it would be like to hear the angels singing, “Glory to God in the highest” in the night sky over Bethlehem.  You have wondered what it would be like to go to the cave, where Jesus was born (though many of you probably think of the barn-like structure that St. Francis of Assisi made popular).  Perhaps you have imagined yourself standing next to Mary or Joseph, and maybe even asking to hold baby Jesus for a moment, and just looking at Him and smiling, as He smiles back to, or sleeps soundly in your arms, swaddled in a cloth.  
    But in this time of waiting for Christ to return, Christ is still vulnerable to us.  While He is King of kings and Lord of lords, reigning from His throne in heaven, He still does not force Himself on us in power, but waits for us to come to Him, to be filled with His joy, to listen for His voice.  And we are free to care for Him tenderly, to hear His voice, or to ignore Him and be deaf to His cries.
    I carried at this Mass in my arms an image of baby Jesus, small and fragile.  But I hold the true Jesus, not just an image, every time I celebrate Mass.  Each time I hold in my hands the sacred host, made the Body and Blood of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit and my ministry, unworthy though I am, I hold Jesus who was born for us in my hands, and He is vulnerable.  Each time I proclaim the Gospel, I hear Jesus’ cries of love for us as He shares who God the Father is, how much He loves us, and how beautiful the Kingdom of Heaven is, for those who are willing to follow Him.  
    And the same is true for everyone here.  God makes Himself vulnerable for you.  He cries out for you.  Each Sunday and Holyday He cries for us to come and spend time with Him, not to attend to His needs as much as to fulfill our own need for God, to fill the empty hole in our hearts that can only be satisfied by God.  Each Mass Jesus allows Himself to be received in the Eucharist, to be fragile on our tongue, or in our hands.  We can receive Jesus lovingly in a state of grace, if we are unaware of any serious sins that have separated us from God.  Each Mass Jesus speaks to us of how much He loves us, and how He desires us to live in accordance with His will, and not our own; to live in the light, and not in the darkness; to be people of peace and not of hatred, prejudice, and violence.  Jesus cries out to us to live according to His pattern of life, and not the selfish life that the world proclaims.  And we can heed His cries and His invitation, or we can ignore it.  We can care for Him with the way we live our lives, or we can abandon Him and pretend He doesn’t exist, or that He is not important to us.
    Tonight God draws us in, as a little child, innocent and vulnerable, as we celebrate Christmas.  Like a baby, God makes Himself small for us that we can approach Him and love Him.  We are invited to see the warmth and joy of the Christ-child’s face, and to listen attentively to His voice, not only today, but every day, week, and month of the year.  “What child is this /who laid to rest / on Mary’s lap is sleeping?”  “O come, let us adore him Christ the Lord!”

Family Issues A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
    There’s a new Star Wars movie out, and I saw it opening night a little over a week ago.  I won’t give anything away, but it seemed familiar to the original three Star Wars movies.  In all the Star Wars movies there are certainly some family problems going on.  In the original three episodes (numbers 4-6), Luke is being raised by his uncle and aunt, who are murdered, and it’s later discovered that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, whom he hates as working for the Empire, but also wants to save, as the Emperor wants Luke to take over for his father.    The next three episodes (number 1-3; it is a little confusing) is about young Darth Vader, or Anakin, as he was then known, who also has family issues, as he has no father (he was conceived by the Force), and ends up really messing his life up by taking vengeance on those who hurt his mother.  He also falls in love with a princess, and even though, as a Jedi, he’s supposed to be celibate, marries her, and they conceive twins (Luke and Leia).  While I won’t go into detail, even the new movies (numbers 7-9) continue the family drama storyline.  But what is common to all the episodes is that the family drama has to do with power and abuses of it.
    I bring that up because, as we heard our second reading, our minds probably went immediately to power.  Maybe they didn’t go there at first, but as soon as we heard, “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands,” I’m sure we all probably bristled a little bit, for one reason or another.  Maybe some felt like that shouldn’t even be a part of Scripture anymore, since, so some think, we’ve moved beyond the “backward” culture in which it was written.  Maybe some of us were trying hard how to understand it, since it is a part of Scripture, which is the infallible Word of God.  But all of us likely heard that passage in the same context of power on which all the Star Wars interfamilial drama is based.
    If this feast of the Holy Family teaches us anything, it’s that the family is not about a power struggle.  It’s not about who has the most power, or who is the boss.  Instead, the Holy Family was all about obedience to God and protecting one another.
    If the Holy Family was about power, then Jesus would have come out of the womb telling Mary and Joseph what to do.  After all, Jesus is the co-eternal Son of God.  Jesus is God, who created all things out of nothing.  He even created, with the help of their parents, Mary and Joseph.  No human could ever be God’s equal, and so, if family life was about power, Jesus would have been the one in charge.  But Jesus came as an infant, with no power, totally reliant and dependent on the love of his mother, Mary, and his foster-father, Joseph.
    After Jesus, Mary comes next in the power hierarchy, as a woman who never sinned.  She was conceived without original sin, and always said yes to God.  So with Jesus as an infant, not able to talk or care for Himself, if the choice was for Mary or Joseph to be in charge, to have all the power, it certainly would have fallen to Mary, based upon her holiness alone.  But, the first time that Mary really issues a command in the Gospel is after Joseph is dead, at the wedding at Cana, when she tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.
    Poor Joseph.  In the midst of the Holy Family, he’s the only one who could be at fault.  His foster-Son is the Son of God, and his wife is sinless.  If anything goes wrong in the household, everyone knows whose fault it is.  Joseph is just, but he wasn’t perfect, and in the midst of such holiness, his sins must have stood out like a sore thumb.  And yet, to whom do the dreams come, where God advises how to proceed?  To Joseph!  In today’s Gospel, the angel appears to Joseph twice, once to tell him to leave for Egypt, and then to tell Joseph it’s safe to return to Israel.  This is backwards from how it should be, if power were the motivating factor in the family.  But that should tell us something: power is not the motivating factor.
    So as we read the passage from our second reading, we have to read it in the light of the model of holiness demonstrated by the Holy Family.  Their concern was not power, but about obedience to the will of God, as it was known to them, and protecting each other.  Sometimes the will of God will have wives obeying their husband; sometimes the will of God will have husbands obeying their wives (many wives will tell you that their greatest skill is letting the husband think that he is being obeyed, when it’s really her decision).  But it’s not about any human will that is being expressed, but what is in the will of God.  And as long as the family is seeking to be obedient to that will, then that family is well on the way to holiness.
    If Star Wars teaches us anything, it’s that viewing the family through the lens of power and control is a recipe for disaster.  And that message, whether intended or not, is based upon the Word of God, which reminds us that, for a family to be holy, it need not be concerned with who has power over whom, but how all the members of the family can be obedient to the will of God.

Statues of the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt at the Milk Grotto

 

Not Yet

Fourth Sunday of Advent

I’m not quite ready.  This is the shortest Advent possible, and this year, it feels like it.  I don’t know about you, but it feels like we just started Advent, and tomorrow night/tonight we are at Christmas.  That’s not to say that the time has had good things.  On the contrary, I have had some great celebrations over the past week.  But I just feel like I’m not ready yet.  Now does not seem like the right time for Christmas.

God in our first reading tells King David through the prophet Nathan that it wasn’t, in fact, quite time yet for the temple.  David wanted to build a temple out of his love for God.  David lived in a pretty plush house for the times, and wanted God’s house to be even greater.  And at first, Nathan agrees.  But then, after God speaks to Nathan at night, Nathan tells David that it’s not time yet.  God has blessed David in many ways, and God will even make a dynasty for David that will last forever.  But God will have David’s son, Solomon, build the temple, not David.

A model of Solomon's Temple
in Jerusalem

We can’t really say that God wasn’t ready for David to build a temple.  But the promise God made to David, and even the building of the temple, was not just in the short term, with David’s immediate descendants and a temple building, but looked forward to the Gospel passage we heard today.

God fulfilled His promise to David through Jesus, who has a kingdom that will never end.  Whereas David died and rested with his ancestors, Jesus was raised from the dead after three days, and lives forever.  And since Mary is of the house of David, Jesus is the fulfillment of that Davidic prophecy.  Jesus rules over the house of Jacob for ever from His throne in heaven.  Perhaps that is why Handel’s Messiah is so popular even at Christmas.  The words from the Hallelujah chorus, at which people traditionally stand, is from the Book of Revelation, and says, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” and “The Kingdom of this world/ Is become the kingdom of our Lord/ And of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever” and “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.”  That promise that we associate with Jesus being born, is still fulfilled as Christ reigns in heaven for ever and ever as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  

But God also fulfills in our Gospel the promise to have a temple.  No, there is no building really spoken of in our Gospel.  It speaks about the Annunciation, when Jesus becomes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  But the temple is the house of God, the place where God dwells, and the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary becomes the new temple, not made with hands, that houses God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  And because the temple was the house of God, it had to be pure, immaculate, so God preserved, from the moment of her conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary from the stain of original sin, which we celebrate each year on 8 December.  When King Solomon built the temple and consecrated it, God overshadowed it and dwelt in it.  So, when Mary said “yes” to becoming the Mother of Jesus, and therefore the Mother of God, the Theotokos, God overshadowed her and Jesus began to dwell in her.  

But besides Mary being the temple, because she was the house of God, Jesus is also the eternal temple, which was destroyed in His crucifixion, but rebuilt in three days.  Jesus’ Body is the physical house of His Divinity, and so is the new temple forever, because Jesus’ humanity is never divorced from His Divinity; they are forever one flesh, the marriage of God and man.  

But we, too, are called to be the temple of God.  God consecrates us and begins to dwell within us in baptism.  Our bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit, which the Church holds to even in our death, which is why the Church recommends a funeral and burial with a body whenever possible (even if the Church does allow cremation as long as one does not act in a way that rejects the resurrection of the body).  All throughout our lives we strive to make sure that the temple is clean, and a place where God feels at home.  We don’t do as well as the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was the perfect disciple, but when our temple needs cleaning and purifying, we ask God’s mercy in confession, so that it can be a place where the Holy Spirit feels at home again.  God always gives us the necessary grace to live as His temple, but we have to respond to that grace.

As we prepare tonight to celebrate the Nativity of our Lord, when the temple of the Lord in Jesus became visible in Bethlehem, may we also prepare our temples, even in this last day, to be the pure and holy temple of God.

Encountering God

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I am a planner.  And so, after I was confirmed in eighth grade, I started to think about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I was thinking about that because I was about to enter high school, and I wanted to make sure that I did well in the classes in that general field, so I could get into a good college so that I could get the job I wanted.  Because I was in a Catholic school, and had been since kindergarten, I knew that if I was going to be happy in my job, it had to be what God wanted me to do.  So I started to pray every day, asking God what He wanted me to do with my life.  I heard no answer, and was a bit frustrated that God was not answering me when I wanted.

So, once I started going to Lansing Catholic High School, I started to go to Mass on weekdays in addition to Sunday, figuring that I would force God to answer me.  One day, at Mass, the priest was a little late, and a nun, that didn’t really know that well, told me that when I became a priest, I should never be late.  In addition, friends of mine kept suggesting that I should be a priest or wondering if that’s what I wanted to do.  Though I was sure I wanted to be married, have kids, and maybe enter a profession in law, I decided to look into the priesthood, and asked priests I knew what it was like to be a priest.

I started, at that moment, to fall in love, not with a girl, but with the church.  The more I knew about her, even with her imperfections, the more I knew I wanted to serve her and dedicate my entire life to her.  I petitioned Bishop Mengeling to enter college seminary after I graduated from high school.  My love for the church continued to grow, and I continued to want to serve God’s people, especially through the sacramental life of the Church, as I progressed through seminary.  It wasn’t always easy, and there were times that I considered leaving, especially my senior year of college seminary, where I was sure the beautiful Catholic girl in my astronomy class was a sign from God that I should get married.  But the Lord helped me to see that I would be truly happy by being a priest.

I tell that story because we should all have a story to tell when it comes to our relationship with God.  It’s not just for priests or religious brothers or sisters.  Maybe it’s not a vocation story, like mine, but hopefully we all have a story of a time that God interacted with us in our lives.  Today we hear about Isaiah’s encounter with God the Father and Simon Peter’s encounter with Jesus.  Those are certainly powerful stories, with major moments that God breaks through in their lives.  But it doesn’t always happen that way.  In my own life, I have rarely had “mountaintop experiences,” and, while they do happen, for many people there are no major moments, but, rather, they see how God led them through different aspects of their life.

Mary, who was confirmed Saturday evening at Mass, has her story of what led her to the Catholic faith.  Damian, Deanna, and Jake, our catechumens, will be sent to the Rite of Election this weekend.  They have their own stories of what led them to the Catholic faith and their relationship with God.  I invite you to think about your own life of faith.  Where has God interacted with you?  Again, it may not be a big moment, but hopefully you can think of a way that God has guided you in a way you understood.  If you don’t, I encourage you to spend time in prayer with God, read the Gospels, maybe go to the Men’s or Women’s Conference in the next year, go on a retreat like Cursillo or another retreat that the Diocese of Lansing offers.  That will help you to think back on a way that God has led you, or maybe will give you your first experience of God interacting with you in your life in a way you recognize.

God calls us and interacts with us throughout our life.  May we look for the ways that God encounters us and we encounter God, and, as we find them, listen to the voice of Jesus who tells us, as he told Simon Peter, “‘Be not afraid.’”